Ricardo Bofill

Ricardo Bofill was born in Barcelona on 5 December 1939. A student at his home city's school of architecture, he was expelled in 1957 for his anti-Franco activism and went on to study in Geneva. In 1963 he brought together engineers, sociologists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, filmmakers and writers in the Taller de Arquitectura, closer to a creative collective than to an ordinary firm. His first work was a holiday house in Ibiza, built for an aunt in 1960; the apartment building on Calle Nicaragua in Barcelona won him the FAD prize in 1964.

The following years were those of residential utopias: Kafka's Castle near Sitges, La Muralla Roja in Calp, Walden 7 in Sant Just Desvern. Next to Walden 7, the Taller came upon an abandoned cement factory, with thirty concrete silos, a chimney and four kilometres of underground tunnels; it turned the site into a studio and residence, whose gardens of palms, ferns, vines, olive trees, cypresses and eucalyptus now envelop the building. Occupied from 1975, La Fábrica won the City of Barcelona's Architecture Prize in 1980 and remains the Taller's home. Bofill also raised a pyramid at Le Perthus, on the Franco-Spanish border, as a tribute to Catalonia.

France then became his main field. In the new towns and in districts being transformed, he built monumental housing complexes made of repetitive elements and play of shadow, drawing on classical references: Les Espaces d'Abraxas at Marne-la-Vallée, Les Arcades du Lac at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, where Le Viaduc reaches out over a 16-hectare basin, and Les Échelles du Baroque in Paris. In Montpellier, from 1979, he designed the Antigone district, inspired by Antiquity, part of which received the “Architecture contemporaine remarquable” label in 2018. He also designed the Arsenal in Metz, a former arsenal turned concert hall (1989).

Later came the 77 West Wacker Drive tower in Chicago (1992), whose base, shaft and capital echo the Greek orders, the National Theatre of Catalonia in Barcelona (1996-1997) and the sail-shaped W hotel in Barcelona (2009). Awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1993 and made an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Ricardo Bofill died on 14 January 2022.